


A Tallied List of Various Occasions in Which Jake English Encountered the Elusive Smile Belonging to One Dirk Strider

by Rikudera



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Dirk being just smart enough to get himself in trouble, Fluff, M/M, jake being awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 10:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5825014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rikudera/pseuds/Rikudera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake English, explorer extraordinaire, tracks down the most unique treasure of all: a nerd in pointy sunglasses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tallied List of Various Occasions in Which Jake English Encountered the Elusive Smile Belonging to One Dirk Strider

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VoodooRadio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VoodooRadio/gifts).



> For [VoodooRadio](http://archiveofourown.org/users/VoodooRadio/pseuds/VoodooRadio) on your birthday. Hope it's a good one!
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, [mostlyharmless](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mostlyharmless/pseuds/mostlyharmless).

The first time you come face-to-face with Dirk Strider, there isn't anything of him other than what's on his face. The Auto-Responder is telling you terrifying things about all your closest friends, and Dirk's head sits heavy in your hands, staring at you wide-eyed behind those aggravating shades of his. When AR says he doesn't know if he can believe in anything, you're immediately filled with the desire to prove him wrong, so you muster your gumption, climb onto the ruins of your grandma's house, and kiss Dirk's head full on the lips.

All around you, the world is going to hell—fire and brimstone and a giant dragon and all—but you can pretend Dirk's there with you if you close your eyes and focus on his face in your hands and his lips pressed against yours. They're chapped, Dirk's slackened lips, and wet with blood, the copper tang and salty sea spray on them, but his face is smooth. Your glasses bump against his, and you'd be annoyed by it if you weren't so busy praying that you'll be able to save him. You aren't sure how much of a kiss you need to give for the magic to work, so you just keep kissing Dirk and wishing with all your might for it to work.

Okay, yes, what with the world ending and volcanos erupting, it’s admittedly, maybe, possibly the slightest, tiniest, most minuscule portion romantic. You're going to save your best bro, and all your other friends too, and by gum, if that requires a kiss, you are going to smooch the _dickens_ out of him.

The Auto-Responder butts in to tell you to look behind you. You turn, still holding Dirk’s head in your hands.

Dirk is there. He's holding a bucket, entirely alive and completely composed. Jane and Roxy are there too, in various states of shock. You feel in a bit of a state yourself, and you yelp as you drop Dirk's head, clamber down from the rubble, and run to throw your arms around your friends with another shout.

Jane squeaks out when you jostle her, and Dirk jumps a little when you touch him, but Roxy beams and flanks the other side of the group hug to stop anyone from squirming away.

Everybody starts talking all at once, Roxy babbling a mile a minute and everybody else trying to squeeze a word in edgewise. Dirk is commenting back with his mouth right above your ear, and Jane is trying to answer Roxy with her voice in your other ear.

"We were zoomin a million miles an hour on Dirk's rocketboard," Roxy is telling you, "through all the red miles and shit."

"Flying through the fire," Dirk interjects. "Careening through the cataclysm."

"My goodness, I honestly thought we were going to die," Jane says. "I mean, we _did_ die, or at least I did."

"I was pretty dead there, too," Roxy replies, "but who _cares_ about that, you guys are here, and I'm here, and..." She keeps going on in this vein, and you do your level best to affirm all her exultations.

"Thanks," Dirk whispers into your ear. You look up at him, and your breath catches for a moment. He's only wearing the faintest hint of a smile, but you know he's the sort of fellow to keep a tight reign on the things most humans are subject to, such as expressions, so it feels like he's grinning just as wide as Roxy. You give him your best smile back.

Shortly, you’ll remember to demand explanations from Dirk and his Auto-Responder, but right now, you wonder what it's like to kiss him while he's alive.

~*~*~*~*~

Touching Dirk is like touching a live wire. He's not used to hanging around other humans, so he jumps if you forget to make sure he sees you reaching. Even if he sees you, he goes very still, not like any of the smaller animals back on your island when a creature more dangerous approached, but like he just doesn't know how things other than robots work. He likes to stare, too, which sometimes makes you self-conscious but which mostly makes you pleased you're worthy of so much attention. He didn't mind when you got curious about his tattoo, and he didn't protest when you touched your fingers to his shoulder to run them over the inky visage of Hella Jeff.

You wanted to kiss him again, that time, but you lose your nerve until fighting a skull monster revs it back up. After a good few minutes of attacking the fiend, you and Dirk finally fell your bony opponent and watch it turn to dust.

"We did it!" you shout, running up to Dirk, stowing your pistols away so you can clap an exultory arm around him. "Showed those ruffians what for, eh?" Dirk only moves to sheathe his sword back into his sylladex. "That last strike was a doozy."

"A doozy, huh?" Dirk replies, turning his head just enough so you can tell he's looking at you. "You were the one who wore it down enough for me to get in there and land the final blow."

"As if you weren't zipping about the place faster than I could see," you retort, still grinning. "Strider the human thunderball."

"Do you mean thunderbolt?" Dirk asks, raising an eyebrow. “Dashin’ to attack at a million volts, already struck before you feel the jolt, bullets flyin’ like the Wonderbolts.”

"I meant exactly what I said, you scalawag," you pout. The rapping is silly, too, but you're feeling celebratory enough to let it slide without heckling it.

"Okay, you nerd." Is he laughing at you? "Come on, let's gear up for the next round.” He wipes a sheen of sweat off his brow, and you watch the tattoo on his shoulder shift over muscle. You rather prefer that it's only sweat on him and not blood.

"Dirk, I admit I'm in a bit of a quandary," you find yourself saying suddenly.

"A quandary?" He still looks like he wants to laugh at your word choice.

"A dilemma, if you will," you elaborate. "A befuddlement. A perplexion."

"What's buggin' you, dude?"

"I was thinking about the day we started the game," you say. Dirk goes still. "More specifically, um... how the whole kerfluffle transpired."

"You were pretty mad at me," Dirk replies. “I remember you yelled at me a lot once we were in the Medium.” How does he get his voice so even? Just thinking about what happened is threatening to make you blush.

"Well," you say, scratching at your cheek thoughtfully while looking away shyly, "most of that was because of your glasses telling me a lot of very alarming things, and I suppose you were rather too deceased to give me any other insight while that was happening, and… hmm." When you look back at Dirk, he hasn't moved. "I guess what I'm saying is that we seem to have meandered around the subject since then, and while I've had a grand time seeing you and Jane and Roxy all in person and fighting monsters together, I really do think we ought to discuss things. Or at the very least, I've thought it over and would like to let you know what I've concluded."

"Sure," Dirk says carefully. Blast it all, he looks like you're about to start shooting him or something. He isn't going to stop you though, so you've got to keep going.

"Capital!" No, that sounds too peppy. "Well, hm. The thing is," you try again, "I'd been meaning to talk to you for nearly the whole day, but I kept getting..." you huff as you search for the appropriate word, "... _interrupted_ by all these other versions of you. Your glasses, your robot, your dream ghost, it was like being bombarded by you from all sides without actually getting to hear you talk, which is a very _strange_ feeling, Dirk. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I get it," Dirk replies. He looks like he's about to frown. Is he frowning? You can't quite tell with him, sometimes. If Brain Ghost Dirk were here, he'd probably tell you to quit with the nervous stalling and get on with it already.

"And then everything started catching on fire, what with all the lava and those crimson kilometers—"

"The Red Miles?"

"—Yes, those, and then your noggin dropped squarely in front of me, and your glasses were carrying on regarding all these downright _frightful_ things about people dying and how I had to save everyone with some magical kiss, and it all culminated into a lot of things going on at once before I had the chance to tell you what I'd wanted to tell you in the first place.” Oh no, now he's _definitely_ frowning. "I wanted to say that I was thinking about some things I'd said in the past, and..." Oh, drat, you're stalling again. Collect your courage and spit it out, English! "And none of it was a big deal at the time, or at least I thought so, but I think I may have jumped to some premature conclusions about one or two things that I feel I should reassess at the present moment."

"What things?" Dirk asks. You can hear the edge form in his voice, now.

"About joking that I’d date you if you were a girl," you reply, looking down at your shoes. "When I realize now that you, um..."

"It's fine," Dirk says. You look back up at him. Goodness, he's tense. "I'm not mad." He looks like a frightened creature about to bolt. "Just... just don't worry about it. It's fine."

"Dirk, I—"

"Stop." He holds up a hand, taking a visible breath. "Just... stop." You frown back at him. "You don't have to trip over yourself to apologize if it makes you that uncomfortable. I get it." When he puts his hand back down, it's shaking.

"Dirk, that's not what I mean!" you huff.

"Then _what do you mean?_ " he asks again.

"What I mean," you shoot back, cheeks hot, "is that I would much rather kiss you while you're alive than while you're dead."

"...Oh," Dirk says quietly, going still again. "Okay."

You're standing very close, so all you have to do is pull Dirk down by the front collar of his shirt to kiss him.

His lips are still chapped, but they're warm and citrusy-sweet and he's kissing you _back_ , and it's _exquisite_.

When you part, he's giving you that just-there smile which is the Dirk Strider equivalent of grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, so you kiss him again with your hands in his hair and a thrill running up your spine.

~*~*~*~*~

You're trying to fight Caliborn, and you're losing.

Without the assistance of Jade and the rest, your attacks against the emerald menace aren't strong enough to defeat him, barely enough to inconvenience him. Embarrassingly enough, you're the first to become incapacitated. You watch from the floor as Roxy follows, then Jane.

Even Dirk is struck to the floor, but he somehow rises to his feet and manages to stand for another round. Caliborn immediately knocks him down again, goading Dirk with taunts either meant for humiliation or flirtation; you can’t tell which. Every time Dirk is struck, he gets back up again, but each time, he's slower to get back to his feet.

You watch, through pained wheezes, as Caliborn bodily suplexes Dirk, following it with a knee to the side, and this time, Dirk fails to get up again.

“On your knees. Is a good place for you. Dirk.” Caliborn is sneering at him, kicking him when he’s down.

“Say that to my face, motherfucker,” Dirk shoots back, doubled over. Caliborn kicks him in the stomach with his golden foot, and Dirk collapses further. “Sorry, couldn’t hear you. You gotta speak up, dude.”

“You can serve me if you're tired of losing.”

“Fuck you.”

Caliborn kicks him again, and Dirk cries out.

He’s going to die, at this rate.

You can't let Caliborn hurt the people you care about any more. You can't lie down and watch Dirk die. If Dirk won't give up, you shouldn't give up, either. You... you _won't_. There must be _something_ you can do.

 _There's a lot you can do_ , something inside you says, quiet but steady. _You can do **anything**_. You think it's been saying that for a very long time.

You bring the thing inside you to the surface, and it erupts in a cloud.

"Excuse me," you say, from the center of your cloud of hope. Slowly, they both look at you. Dirk's mouth has fallen open. His glasses are askew and his citrine eyes are wide. "But you need to get your hands off of him."

Dirk looks up at you, and a smile breaks across his face in relief and wonder, like a dark cloud passing to reveal the sun. You take that feeling, and aim it directly at your skull-faced opponent.

"...Oh fuck," Caliborn says.

After Caliborn and his puppet's been taken care of, but before you attempt to liberate Jade and the others from the house-juju to fight his larger form, you pull the other three with you into a hug, just like when you all met for the first time. Everyone is injured, and you don't really know what to say, but you're so glad everyone is still _here_ that you want to cry.

Okay, yes, you are definitely crying, but they're happy tears, so you don't hold them back.

"Thank you," Dirk says into your ear again. You look up at him, his face slightly blurred around the edges; he's still got that smile. They're the same words he said last time, too, but there's a depth to them that wasn't there before. Or maybe one you just hadn't noticed.

A quiet laugh slips past your lips, and despite your own injuries, you’re weightless as a feather. When you pull him closer, it feels like he never left.

~*~*~*~*~

After all the fighting is done—enemies defeated, losses mourned, cycles escaped—you finally find peace in which to rebuild. There's much work to be done still, and it is very easy to busy yourself with the never-ending series of tasks, but you find yourself drawn to Dirk whenever he's near. You don't know what to say to him, only able to throw occasional shy glances in his direction at first, but you enjoy his company.

Once, you catch him staring back, pained longing bare on his face, and then his expression goes opaque as a brick wall and he looks away. You ponder the fact that he’s hiding himself from you like that, and you decide that while he’s certainly allowed to do that if he wishes, you’d really rather he be honest with you instead. It just doesn’t sit right with you, having him be afraid of you.

The next time you encounter him alone, you resolve to voice your opinion on the matter.

“Dirk,” you say. You’d actually gone to the workshop looking for Jade, but found Dirk instead, tinkering with one of the surveyor-bots. He’s frowning between a schematic on the laptop next to him and the open metal chassis, a screwdriver in his hand and a smear of machine oil on his cheek.

“Hm?” he replies absently, then looks up. He freezes, then deliberately relaxes and looks back at the bot. “If you’re looking for Jade, she went to go do something with Kanaya.”

“Dirk,” you repeat. He looks up again. “Can we talk?”

“...No problem,” he says, putting the screwdriver down. “What’s up?”

Well, it’s not a trial and execution, for one.

“We never got to talk before,” you explain, walking into the room and pulling a stool up next to his. Even though he’s wearing those ridiculous shades, you can tell his eyes are following your every move. Knowing that you have his undivided attention always threatens to make you blush. “About our relationship.”

“We don’t have a relationship,” Dirk says, finally looking away. “That’s pretty much all there is to say on the matter, isn’t there?”

“Does it have to be?” you ask. “I don’t really remember everything I did while under the influence of that… candy, but I certainly remember you were quite cross with me.” Dirk’s hands grip tightly onto his knees. “And I remember there were a great deal of very hectic, very _dangerous_ events immediately following all of that, which we all got swept up in, and so we never got to talk about anything, but it’s all done with now, so I’d really like it if you stopped avoiding me so we could discuss it.”

“Not like there was any conversation to miss in the first place,” Dirk says, fingernails digging into his knees. “I was a suffocating control-freak, and you ran away as soon as you came to your senses about it. I know I owe you an apology for pretty much every single facet of my behavior towards you, but if you want an itemized list of transgressions, it might take a while.” On the surface, he’s going through all the motions of trying to be as difficult as possible, presumably to make you lose your temper and abandon the discussion, but when you examine the set of his shoulders, you can tell he’s terrified.

What is he terrified of more, you wonder. You agreeing, or you disagreeing?

“I ran away because I needed space for myself,” you start, “and I won’t deny there were a few behaviors on your part that I found a wee bit stifling.”

“A few?” Dirk interrupts.

“ _But_ ,” you continue, because you refuse to let him work you into a fuss when you’re trying to reconcile, “it wasn’t right of me to stop talking to you without an explanation.”

“Dude, you can't even compare those two things. How I acted was way worse than—”

“Don't do that.” You put a hand against his mouth, and he stops abruptly. “Let me finish.” You exhale something in between a huff and a sigh. “If you start with those neurotic behaviors again, I won't accept it,” you feel the downturn of his lips against your palm, “but I miss you, and I don't want to run away from that anymore.” You move your hand away from his mouth to rub away the machine oil with your thumb.

“Jake, I…” Dirk leans his face into your hand, and you can see his eyebrows scrunch up.

You lean forward and kiss him. He moves toward you like you’re the only green in an endless desert. You pull him closer because you want to show him how it feels to believe in something.

“God, I missed you so much,” Dirk whispers, once you’re finally able to separate. “I told myself not to, but I—”

“Dirk, you dunderhead,” you say, still holding his face in your hands. “I’m right here.”

“I’m still not sure this is going to end well,” Dirk says, though he's still leaning into you.

“Well, not with _that_ attitude, it’s not,” you retort. Dirk blinks at you, then lets out a soft chuckle. “I’m serious!”

“You’re such a dweeb,” Dirk says. He’s smiling, though.

“If you say so, wisenheimer,” you reply, and then you kiss him again.


End file.
